


And He Does

by raendown



Category: Naruto
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-09-11
Updated: 2017-09-11
Packaged: 2018-12-26 11:59:28
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,363
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12058557
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/raendown/pseuds/raendown
Summary: From the end to the beginning, some things never change.





	And He Does

**Author's Note:**

> Happy birthday to the wonderful mydarlingl0ve on tumblr!

He holds her hands in his last moments. Old and gray and so very tired, ready to go on to the next world. His wrinkles have wrinkles and his hands shake. He’s lost vision entirely in one eye but the other focuses on her, only ever her. An oxygen mask keeps the secret of any last words he manages to whisper but his intent is clear as he reaches out for her. Sakura takes his hand in both of her own.

“I’m here love, I won’t leave.” She bends her already bent back and kisses his brow. Strange how his white hair seemed to darken to gray with age. She loves him all the same.

Through the mask she can just make out his smile, a beautiful echo of that rakish grin that she fell in love with so many years before. This one is fading, faded, gone. It hangs on his mouth like a shirt left on a hangar, forgotten. His gaze bores in to hers for as long as she sits still, unmoving to match him. If she doesn’t move then she can pretend that he hasn’t slipped away between her very fingers, gone at last.

“Wait for me, will you?”

 

-

 

The ocean greets them with peaceful waves and gentle breezes, the smell of salt in the air and the blue, blue sky for endless miles. None of it is half as beautiful as she is standing framed in the doorway with the wind pulling at her skirt. In moments like this the decades melt away and all that he sees is the soul deep down inside of her, that beacon that calls him home no matter how far he wanders along the path of life.

Kakashi watches his wife breathe deeply, letting it all back out with a lusty sigh, and wants nothing more than to pull his fingers through her hair to find the lingering traces of pink.

“We _earned_ this!” She says, spreading her arms wide to greet the seaside below them. “Sometimes it felt like we’d never get here.”

“Retirement takes a while, love.” He watches as Sakura tilts her head back to smile up at the puffy clouds, exposing the long line of her throat.

“Think of all the places we can go now! We finally have the time to go see all the things we’ve always wanted to see. Where do you think we should start after this? The mountains? The desert?”

He comes up behind her and wraps arms around her waist, not quite as trim as when they met but still a perfect fit in his embrace. She giggles as he hums in to her neck, a low note of want rippling from his lips and on to her skin.

“Let’s start with the bedroom,” he suggests. Sakura turns in his arms and laughs, granting him the mercy of a single kiss before twisting out of his grasp and dashing ahead of him back in to the hotel room. He is smirking as he closes the balcony doors. “Wait for me, will you?”

 

-

 

“She’ll be fine.”

“I know.”

“She’s planned every moment of this.”

“I know.”

“She’s a big girl now, Kakashi.”

“She’ll never be anything but my little baby girl.”

Sakura laughs and leans in to his side, looking through the window with him to watch the back of the car heading west on its first big adventure. The girl inside is only eighteen years old, off to college in another city. It’s her first big adventure too.

“You’re crying aren’t you?”

“You shut your mouth. I’m leaking man juice.”

Laughing, Sakura reaches down and entwines her fingers with her husband’s. “That’s the most disgusting thing I’ve ever heard.” There is so much love in her words that all the edges are worn away before they even reach him. Kakashi sniffles as the car finally putts out of view, looking over to the woman standing with him.

“You’re sure she’s got everything?” He asks. Sakura huffs.

“I went over everything she packed myself.”

“So…that isn’t her wallet sitting on the windowsill?”

Sakura looks at the window and back to him. They hang suspended for a long moment, barely held together by love and clothespins and eighteen years of packing lunches. Then Kakashi is snatching up the wallet and dashing for the door, keys in hand as he flies towards his own beat up silver car. Sakura flies after him, scrambling for her shoes.

“Wait for me, will you!?”

 

-

 

The ceilings are too low. His hair brushes against cobwebs as he climbs the creaky staircase, wary of the third step that wobbles and threatens to toss him down in to the maw of the lower floor. At the top the railing is dusty and crooked. He pats it anyway as he passes by, fingers leaving patterns in the dirt like code to be decrypted.

She waits for him in an empty room, sunlight streaming through a cracked windowpane to fall across her face and illuminate her head with a pink halo. Their two year old rides high on her hip, sucking the edge of a blanket as she blinks around at the bare walls.

Sakura turns to him with the brightest smile he’s seen on her face in years. He wants to frame that smile, hang it on the wall before anything else.

“This is _ours_ ,” she says, breathy and happy and so full of life. Kakashi nods, smiling out the doorway at the worn wooden floorboards.

“It’ll take a bit to fix her up.” He runs a hand along the doorframe in contemplation before reaching out for her. “Someday it’ll be almost as beautiful as you.” She laughs, a sound of sheer joy torn up from too many memories.

“ _Ours_ , Kakashi. No rent. No landlord. No crazy old couple on the other side of the wall. This is our house. We own this. It’s…it’s perfect.” She’s got tears in her eyes but they don’t fall because she’s still too busy laughing, spinning circles while the baby giggles on her hip.

He wants to bottle the moment. They’ve scrimped and saved and pinched their pennies. They did their time in bad apartments in terrible neighborhoods, good apartments with kind landlords, even heading back home to spend a year in her parents’ basement. And this house is what they have to show for it. It’s got cracks and dust, rot and rust, and he’s never been more proud of anything in his life. Here is where he will put down his roots and build a future with his family.

“Where should we start?”

Her eyes light up. “I have so many ideas! We should put a garden out front! Vegetables, to save money on the groceries. And the porch would look ten times better with some paint. The kitchen too! Those pictures of last summer would look so good in the hall way, don’t you think?”

Kakashi is laughing as he walks over to hold her face between his hands.

“You’re always running so far ahead,” he chides her fondly. “Wait for me, will you?”

 

-

 

Just his hand is bigger than the tiny head that rests in his palm. It boggles his mind that something so small can exist and every moment he is terrified that some small twitch will crush her, take away this tiny bundle of perfection.

“Did we really make this together?” he asks.

From the bed, Sakura regards him tiredly. Drying sweat plasters her pink hair to her forehead, darkening the strands and tamping down the frizz she always complains about. Her forehead is lined with stress and effort, her limbs shaking with exhaustion. Her smile is still brighter than any of the harsh lights in the ceiling above them.

“Excuse me, which one of us did all the work?” she grouses.

“You are a queen and a champion,” he tells her, sparing her a moment’s glance before his eyes draw back to the child in his arms. “Hey baby girl, did you know your mommy is the bravest mommy in the world?”

Neither of them mention the tears they’re both crying, the small hitches of breath or rapid blinking. There’s so much happiness in the both of them – too much; it spills past her lashes and drips from his chin on to teeny, delicate little fingers.

“Thank you,” he whispers. “Thank you, thank you, thank you.” He’s been saying it all day and he won’t stop saying it for years to come. He’ll never stop thanking her for this life they built together, for the incredible happiness that having her in his world has given him.

Sakura hums a low note and by the time he dares to look up again she has fallen asleep at last, pulled down in to dreams she always says aren’t half as good as reality. Kakashi smiles between his wife and his newborn child.

“Well how about that. You both fell asleep. That’s not fair you guys, I want to sleep too.”

He is loathe to put the child down, so he simply crawls on to the hospital bed and places her in the space between them, more careful than he has ever been with anything in his entire life. A yawn cracks his jaw.

“Wait for me, will you?”

 

-

 

She captures the starlight in her eyes and there are times when she is so bright he can hardly stand to look at her. He does it anyway, can’t help it, would rather be blind than look anywhere else.

The lace on her shirt flounces as she skips ahead of him on the boardwalk, her happy chatter filling the empty night around them. She always has a way of making him feel so high off the ground and he hopes his feet will never touch the earth again.

He’s going to do it. This is the night. The moment. All the big plans he’s made fall away like cobwebs while she dances and skips before him. He stops underneath a broken streetlamp and pretends it isn’t because he only ever wants the light to shine on her. She deserves to have the whole world shine for her.

“Hey,” His voice calls her back. “Don’t get so far ahead.”

When she turns he is down like he is only tying his shoe. It’s his grin and the shape of his hands that tells her he isn’t doing anything of the sort. She clasps both hands to her mouth as he lifts the ring, fingers shaking almost hard enough to drop it.

He looks up at her with such nerves in his eyes and she will never, never, never love another.

“Wait for me, will you?”

 

-

 

School sucks, her friends are dumb, and this whole town has gone to hell – but she has Kakashi. Her best friend is the only thing that makes it worth coming to class every day.

They should be in class now but the summer heat buzzes around them and it’s too much trouble to move. They make a nest under the bleachers and lay together, picking words from the air and trading them slowly, lazy in a chorus of crickets.

“Dad says we’re moving.”

“What!?” Her languor is broken in four words. He says it so casually, as though he hasn’t just shattered her entire world. Kakashi doesn’t move at first. He stays spread out in the grass with his arms behind his head and his eyes focused upwards.

“His sister’s really sick. He’s got to go take care of her and he’s taking me with him. We’re moving away next month and I don’t know how long we’ll be gone.”

It feels like the earth has been pulled from underneath her and the sky will come falling down at any moment. Kakashi is her center, her best friend, her whole world. She doesn’t know what she will do without him or even who to be.

When she says nothing Kakashi finally sits up, his face both worried and eager. He rolls on to his knees before her and takes her hands.

“Hey, it won’t be forever. I’ll come back, I promise!”

Tears stain her cheeks almost immediately and she watches the way his face crumples for them. She does not expect the way he leans forward, pressing his lips against her own in a fumbling first kiss, fingers clutching and heart pounding and head spinning like a top. When he pulls away she stares at him in awe, watching the blush spread across his pale cheekbones.

Kakashi ducks his head shyly but his eyes don’t leave hers as he whispers.

“Wait for me, will you?”

 

-

 

The air is filled with raucous noise and her squeal of delight is lost among the many others as she hurtles around the slide, small feet fluttering through the sand. She loves to play chase and there are so many kids on the playground today! Half of them she’s never met but instinctive friendship is a trait of all children, not to be bred out of her for years more to come.

The one she likes best is a little boy with silver hair only a few years older than her. He looks like he’s made a hat out of the moon and his long legs make him _fly_ as they chase each other in circles around the swings and the sandbox.

Sakura’s hair bounces around her faces as she almost trips, hands reaching out and only just missing the hem of the boy’s shirt. He peeks back over his shoulder with laughter in his dark gray eyes, leaping ahead towards the trees.

“Come on! I’ll show you my secret fort!”

Delighted, she lets loose another squeal as she struggles to keep up. He flies, flies, flies across the grass and she thinks him a bird, so free and graceful. Her small body just isn’t enough to keep up yet and she reaches out a hand once more.

“Hey!”

He’s getting farther, almost out of reach. She doesn’t want to lose him, desperately wants to see the adventures that he has waiting for her.

“Wait for me, will you?”

And he does.


End file.
